Class and Elizabeth Jane Howard

From a review in the London Review of Books by Tessa Hadley of All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard (and Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles family saga). The unreflecting, self-denying Cazalets are middle class.

[Mrs Cazalet] encourages [her daughter] to think she is clumsy and ugly, because it’s good for her; and, besides, the family ‘did not mention, let alone discuss, people’s appearance’.

No one talks serious politics, and the older generation share an unexamined conservatism.

An aura of art hovers round the family, conferring its high-mindedness… But at their core the Cazalets are fairly philistine and definitely unintellectual.

Howard can give flat utterance to things which were more or less understood between her protagonists, but which they didn’t have a language for.

No doubt there’s something to be said for not making a fuss, doing your duty, getting on with things, not indulging yourself, pouring a stiff drink instead of moping.

[They’re not religious but] there’s a strongly self-sacrificial inflection in their way of thinking and the standards they set themselves. Some of Mrs C’s preferences are fairly frightening: tepid baths – they’re not ‘meant to be pleasant’ – and hard toilet paper; boiled mutton and blancmange.

[The mother and daughter] are a mostly vanished English middle-class type: girlish into old age, unsexual… disciplined, conscientious, narrow… always putting their own interests last.


More here.

Classy Schools and Careers

Only desperate pleading won Shirley Williams six months at the local primary school and a brief reprieve from boarding school. (LRB Dec 2013)

A world of nurseries and pinafores which felt like "the snuffing out of every spontaneous impulse". (Architect Alison Smithson on her Edwardian-style upbringing)

When he appointed me in 1988 John Major said me, him and the filing clerks were the only non-Oxbridge Treasury staff. (@PeterWanless)

Writer Tim Lott’s daughter doesn’t quite understand “that one only goes to a faith school in order to get better exam results, not to actually sign up for a medieval worldview.”

If anyone in the news went to public school, journalists are determined to make something of it. OK, with the government they’ve got a point, but David Walliams? Interviewer Robert Crampton of the Times marvelled that Matt Lucas, from a “deprived” background, was sunny and relaxed, while Walliams – who had been to a public school – admitted that his childhood hadn’t always been happy and he suffered from nerves and angst.

Upwards all think they should be a writer, artist, actor or musician. As talent is rare, they work “in the arts” or the media. If they can’t get a media job, and decide making their own chutney will never pay, they want to lead informative walks around London.

Without capital there was no means of making a start [as a novelist]. (Arthur Calder-Marshall, The Magic of My Youth, writing about the early 30s.)

Middle-class Upward parents are furious that after all their piano lessons, activities and private tutors their children are "obsessed by” pop culture heroes and heroines – who are working class kids who have achieved instant fame on a chav talent show. The pop culture heroines have probably put in gruelling years at stage school, or are naturally talented. But the Upward parents want to push the line that their kids must work hard 24/7 if they want to achieve anything.

Gap years are now too expensive (higher uni fees), also middle-class kids can’t afford to waste time. Instead they are going on mini-gaps of three months (as we used to before it all got so competitive).

Relatives will always ask young people at university “And what job does that qualify you for?”, but the Upwards still send their kids to uni to get a general education, while lower-middle-class Teales train as dog groomers and fantasy artists, or set up their own interior design practice. Working-class Definitelies become tattooists and nail technicians. Middle class kids become ballerinas, not dancers in musicals; conceptual artists, not fashion illustrators. In the 50s, they were never allowed to learn to tap dance.

Writer Penelope Fitzgerald’s husband got a job “issuing train tickets for the Lunn Poly travel agency. It was low-paid and menial, far below what either had expected: ‘I’m not going to pretend anything about my job,’ Edward says in [her novel] Offshore, as his wife realises ‘in terror’ that he will ‘never get anywhere’.” LRB Jan 2014

James Hawes’ typical character realizes that working hard and playing by the rules will never get him the family home in a nice area the middle-class children of the 70s took to be their due… the children of the rich he thought of as friends at university are from a world whose admission price he cannot afford. “You have to go and be an accountant or a schoolteacher.” [Now this character is as likely to be a young woman with] a degree that was next to worthless because so many of her contemporaries had one too. [If she wants to work in the media, she has to do work experience:] a refined version of slavery. (Waiting for the Etonians by Nick Cohen)

More careers here.
More schools here.

Classy Quotes 15

Novelist Nina Bawden was born in 1925 and raised in Ilford, Essex, in "a rather nasty housing estate that [her] mother despised". (Wikipedia)

They preached the lessons of moderation, cleanliness, simplicity, self-denial and humility with an admirable thoroughness, low-church to the core… There was no need for place mats as the meal was to be cold, but place mats were invariably laid. (Jerusalem the Golden, Margaret Drabble)

WASPs took pride in "good posture, genteel manners, personal hygiene, pointless discipline, the ability to sit still for long periods of time" (Wikipedia on WASPs)

My three best girlfriends were daughters of earls… but their upbringings had been even colder and lonelier than mine… I didn’t know how out of touch I was. I thought that I was worldly and sophisticated, but I had no idea what the world was like. I became aware of how oddly sheltered and yet at the same time unprotected I had been. (aristocratic Ivana Lowell, Why Not Say What Happened?)

"Ah," Roland cried delightedly, "I see we have a new class now. There used to be those who had the tele and those who were above it. Now we have those who have the tele and are still above it." (A Bit off the Map and Other Stories, Angus Wilson)

In a really nice hotel or restaurant, things like old fraying stained suitcases and terrible clothes equal terrible rooms, uninterested service, and bad tables. (Stephanie Pierson, Males, Nails, Sample Sales (She also says that good clothes will win you the job, but warns that in Europe you get what you pay for – smart clothes and luggage won’t get you an upgrade to first class, or a better hotel room.)

One Facebook user, Jennifer Huggins, wrote on Waitrose's Facebook page: "Please stop the free coffee at Barry Waitrose, it is putting me off shopping in the store. People are coming with two cards two free coffee no shopping, with their Tesco bags." (Telegraph Dec 2013

It was a strange time in Prague. The city was awash with young Westerners, mostly Americans, and the Americans … were all setting up small businesses. There was great snobbery, with those who'd been there for eighteen months greatly despising those who'd been there for a mere six. (JP)

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
(T.S. Eliot The “area” was a small courtyard at basement level, below the street. Steps led up to a gate in the railings.)

Virginia Woolf found “ordinary people… repulsive in the mass”. In 1915 she  describes train journeys taken with “shabby clerks and dressmakers” and women with string bags. Buying her own food is a “degrading but rather amusing business. I dislike the sight of women shopping. They take it so seriously.” In one of her novels (Night and Day), an upper-middle-class man meets a lower-middle-class woman and joins her suburban family for “an unpleasant meal under a very bright light”. Leonard Woolf loathed “cheap humanity” in “red villas”. Virginia thought Leonard’s “uneasiness in the presence of the lower classes; always suspects them, is never genial with them” could be explained by the fact that he was not a “gentleman”. Does anybody read her novels any more? (Alison Light, Mrs Woolf and the Servants)

A character in a novel by Enid Bagnold dismisses an applicant for the post of cook as “a born lavatory attendant”. (The Duchess of Denver in Dorothy Sayers’ Strong Poison talks of the victims of a poisoner being “born murderees”.)

Councils aren't against non-chainstore spaces as long as they conform to a Farrow & Ball model of middle-class individuality. (Guardian Nov 2013)

Research suggests the upper classes are less cognizant of others, worse at reading other people's emotions and less altruistic than individuals in lower social classes. "If you occupy these higher echelons, you start to see yourself as more entitled, and develop a heightened self-focus," [researcher Paul] Piff told the Guardian. "Your social environment is likely more buffered against the impact of your actions, and you might not perceive the risks of your behaviour because you are better resourced, you have the money for lawyers and so on." (Feb 27 2012)

Who are you calling an average Joe you two up two down 2.4 children Just for Men mediocre tea and digestive swilling Punto driving middle England Harvester frequenting Mail reading Saturday lawn mowing non-entity you? (Commenter on lions-tour-extra.com, 2007 The riposte: Black poloneck man is having a hormone imbalance. Quick get some sushi or latte or something!!!)

The idea of being stuck in some concrete complex surrounded by sunburnt, overweight, Daily Mail reading, Harvester-frequenting, Chelsea supporters piling their plates high with a full English and “free” cocktail at 9.30am, is not an experience I’d pay for. (Letter to the Guardian, 2013-05-26)

More here, and links to the rest.

Come into the Garden

Walter Fish wanted paths, lawns and a symmetrical line-up of dahlias. Margery wanted Jekyll-like drifts, wild flowers and informality. Walter laid his lawn with a very narrow strip of earth down one side where he said she could have flowers as long as they didn’t encroach on the grass. He banished wisteria… London Review of Books Dec 2013 on gardening writer Margery Fish. When Walter died, she got her garden.

My father sneered at next door’s garden because they had crescent-shaped beds with sharp edges, as in a park. “Half of us get upset if next door’s garden is a jungle”, says the Daily Mail. The other half get upset if next door’s garden is too neat. (June 2012) Or if someone in the street goes all Zen.

Vita Sackville-West (of Sissinghurst fame) sneered at writer Leonard Woolf for putting statuary and a water garden next to a cottage, like a mini-Versailles. Virginia Woolf was caustic about his “leaden cupids”.

The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia has some hilariously snobbish gardening advice: A crazy paving path does not go with an 18th century cottage; “informal” planting should all be the same colour. And “...make sure the furnishings do not ruin the effect. A wrought-iron bench, for instance, might be too elaborate for many gardens, whereas a simple wooden one would rarely jar… A decorated Italian urn is probably too grand for an informal, suburban garden, even if planted with humble daisies… Slight deviations [from original concept] will create a sense of clutter and all your planning will have been in vain…. Avoid crowding the basic pattern with a 'liquorice allsorts' sprinkling of plants.”

Very trendy Rowena Upward has a genuine cast iron “rustic twig” Victorian garden bench, circa 1850.

Granset’s advice on moving to a village warns against immediately cutting down your trees or putting up a two-car garage.  And don’t try to join everything – but do turn up to all the events.

Upper-middle-class Samantha Upward encourages spiders to keep down flies, middle-middle Eileen Weybridge runs screaming, lower-middle Jen Teale thinks spiderwebs are so untidy, Sharon Definitely sprays bugs with Insectrol – which Sam could never do because a) it’s cruel b) it damages the environment and c) CFCs are destroying the ozone layer.

Rockeries and dahlias are beyond the pale (though dahlias may be making a comeback as some gentleman is growing rare varieties). People grow them on allotments, says gardener Alan Titchmarsh, adding “don’t spurn the dahlia – it’s worth a second look”.

In Victorian days, stately homes had acres of greenhouses for raising bedding plants: these were planted in geometric, brightly coloured arrangements by teams of gardeners. The plants were replaced as soon as they were “over”. The bright colours are somewhat out of date (though this kind of planting can still be seen in the centre of roundabouts, at the seaside and in some London parks). Unfortunately, the suburbs copied, and by the early 20th century bedding plants were flourishing in Metroland, the Arts and Crafts suburbs beloved of John Betjeman. These days, bedding plants are bought at garden centres, not raised in your own greenhouses, and are thrown out when they cease flowering. Samantha finds the whole process unnatural. She likes the new style of planting, with tightly packed alchemillas, Chinese grasses, purple loosestrife and herbs.

Upwards can’t have a garden that’s “overlooked”, and Sam turns up her nose at those who turn an entire small back garden into a deck, trampoline, swimming pool or carp pond.

What gadgets can you have in your garden? Is a Kadai fire bowl posh, but a pizza oven nouveau? An outside area with Flintstone walls, an outside hearth and a hot tub is very vulgar indeed.

More here, and links to the rest.

The Middle Classes in the 80s

Anti-glamour

The middle-class Upwards loved the 80s. Socialism and feminism were a club they could join. Everyone else was a Sloane Ranger, a Yuppie or on the dole. Thatcher was in power, destroying industry and starting wars. The world had got to change. The Upwards thought they were spearheading a revolution, and soon everybody in the world would copy their earnestness, drab clothes and woolly thinking. They had a lovely time bossing everybody about and telling them off for being ideologically unsound. Like any cult, they were keen to recruit you, and then persuade you to give up your personal life and spend all your spare time working for the cause.

Unfortunately they were the last group you’d want running the world – they couldn’t even run a women’s centre. They got funding for enterprises that did nothing but hold meetings (probably about “this group’s attitude to Nicaragua”).

Some time in the 80s a working-class woman wrote an article in the Guardian urging us to “go for what’s winnable”. Upwards were puzzled. It was a totally new idea. Their plan was to go for nothing less than complete equality, worldwide. This excused them from actually achieving anything, like deciding where to keep the stapler. More silly ideas: they thought science was “hubristic”, logic a male conspiracy, and knitting anti-feminist. Show them a party line and they toed it. Instead of science, they believed in magic – they loved Freud and Jung.

They couldn’t say someone was pretty – it was “conventionally good-looking”. They chose plain girl/boyfriends as a political statement. Female pop stars wore long baggy overcoats and danced clumsily to prevent women being seen as “sex objects”.

We couldn’t be girly. Upwards always like being puritanical and ascetic: they enjoyed banning hairstyles, fashion, makeup – and sex with men. They wore cheap, practical, hardwearing dungarees and parrot earrings, and cut each other’s hair. They didn’t read chicklit but Virago reissues of women novelists, or books of boring essays. We couldn’t go to the movies but had to go to political cabaret, pretentious French “cirques” and miners’ benefits. We listened to U2 and Mary Black (PC messages), not Duran Duran or Gary Numan (tunes).

Stoke Newington used to be a hangout for girls with white legs and short hair who wore summer dresses made out of 50s curtains (and were accompanied by stooping, weedy boyfriends). Stokeys have become much more normal, but maybe that’s because many of their obsessions have become mainstream and commercialised (health food, modern antiques, vintage clothes, cappuccino, sitting in cafes, baby slings, massage, yoga, visiting the third world). Also bus services improved and we're no longer so cut off from the rest of the city.

They gave sons dolls and daughters plumbing sets. A writer in The Independent (May 12, 2004) calls the idea that gender is a product of nurture, not nature, “an idea that was briefly fashionable in the 60s and 70s”. It was all a fashion? Unthinkable!

Being Upwards, they worked the system like mad, getting a grant to do up a five-bedroom house in Hackney, or blagging a council flat in Westminster, living on the dole and getting their mortgage paid but still making money at a creative skill that they didn't “declare” (ie you lied or kept quiet about it). They then boasted about their cleverness and creativity in a quiet way. And their friends flourished them in front of their other friends to make them feel small.

The wider world paid them little attention, and 20 years on, high streets are full of tanning salons, nail bars and waxing parlours. Female pop stars went back to being sexy and glamorous in a few years. (OK, some important laws were passed, and society became less authoritarian and unfair. The liberal project is still going – we've got women bishops at last!)

When the party was over, people who had wasted years of their lives in a travelling circus with a political message dusted themselves down, got a teaching qualification and ended up running something, buying a house and joining a pension scheme. They were never much bothered by contradictions.

I even wrote a novel about it all called The Fourth Door.

What to Wear II

Clothes for a girl in a government job

At the time there was, in fact, a perfectly acceptable bourgeois female trouser in circulation – only none of us possessed a pair, of course. This was the knitted nylon taper trouser with a strap beneath the foot to keep the hem from rolling up. This garment, originally some form of skiing apparel, combined with a chunky Italian sweater and beehive hairdo, was standard lower-middle lounge bar gear. (Angela Carter, on the earnest discussions people used to have about what women should wear for sit-ins – protests where they might be carried off by the police and reveal their knickers, suspenders and stocking-tops).

She said it was common to wear silk stockings in the country. (Our Spoons Came from Woolworths, set in the 30s)

I would rather not wear all of these rings at once for fear that I may be inclined to start calling people “daahhling” and ordering them about. ( Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour)

And she much prefers wearing rings to gloves. Maybe she thinks they do not go together? (Etiquette guru Emily Post on the vulgar woman with an elaborate hat and fur coat who is always to be seen eating in restaurants.)

“From a long way away – a long way – she might have looked 30. Close at hand the result of make-up artlessly applied made her seem rather older than 50, but on the whole he put it at 50. Dark hair heavily hanging. No hat... a dark coat and skirt and a white blouse. Carrying a large tartan bag. A jingly bracelet or two, several rings…” (Agatha Christie, The Clocks This is a character who calls herself "Merlina Rival".)

What has become of the woman who had a small dog, a charm bracelet, pin heels and a fur coat? Plus hot pink lipstick that stained cigarette ends and teacups, and a cloud of choking perfume. She either wore a brocade dress over an obvious corselette, or a frilly white blouse and a very tight black pencil skirt. In early decades her high-heeled shoes had ankle straps. She shakes hands with her tight, coloured suede glove on, possibly saying “Excuse my glove!”, as it would take too long for her to peel the glove off. As well as the lipstick (that went over her lipline in a cupid’s bow and “bled” into the fine lines round her mouth), she wore thick, pale, chalky powder that smelled of Edinburgh Rock. (She’s the one who says “tata” for goodbye, or "Well, I must love you and leave you!" or "Be good!".)

In the 50s women were admonished not to wear “clanking” charm bracelets (a polite way of saying they were common). Sealskin jackets, frilly blouses and ankle-strap shoes were also nonos. A schoolfriend was forbidden by the headmistress to take a tartan bag on a day out. (The same nun forbade clip-on pearl earrings – which we had all got free by collecting special crisp packets.)

Upwards never wear 15-denier tights – they’re too sexy. They’re very puritanical about turning yourself into a sex object – or at least they were round about 1975. Even drab icon Emma Thompson (she used to dress entirely in unbleached linen shrouds) has become glamorous now.

In 2012 toffs took to wearing wearing red trousers - with tweed jackets. Hipsters are also wearing very, very tight red trousers.

Stow Crats match the clothes to the occasion. Caro wouldn’t wear a sunhat on a dull day, or in a town or to the theatre. She wouldn’t wear a cocktail dress at 9am, like a weather girl. When Sharon Definitely and her children go on breakfast telly, they all wear party frocks and hair ornaments and look fabulous.

Lower-middle class Jen Teale loves pleated necklines and cutwork (a lot of work for a hideous result). Bryan Teale hangs his jackets or spare shirt on a hanger in the car.

What do you do when it rains? Howard Weybridge and Harry Stow Crat carry black rolled-up brollies in town. Harry shudders discreetly when Howard turns up in an anorak over a city suit. In a sudden shower, Christine Teale buys a “tote” from a stall which breaks before she gets home. (A “tote” is a telescopic umbrella that comes in a little “pochette”.) Jen buys a clear plastic dome-shaped umbrella from a souvenir shop – well, the Queen's got one, though hers isn't printed “I heart London”. Otherwise Jen’s umbrellas are turquoise or fake tweed (but not Burberry). Caro grabs a city brolly, or maybe a huge golfing umbrella. Sharon Definitely has a brolly with cats’ ears, which she uses as a parasol.

In Jilly Cooper’s Class (written in the 70s), Jen memorably wore a plastic mac with a rainbonnet and rain boots. These days she wears a smart trench coat (she calls it a “trench”) and a hat from Accessorize. Caro is still wearing a Barbour jacket and a headscarf. Samantha Upward wears a strange assortment of garments and gets soaking wet because she can’t wear anything plastic or even rainproofed. And she's never "prepared", like a Boy Scout.

Definitelies wear sovereign rings and glitter ball beads (“berry” beads) and pavé diamond chips. The beads have moved up the classes and are now everywhere in 2013. Oddly, Teales have taken to nose studs – but very tiny diamond ones.

More here.
More jewellery here.

The Art of Blending In

Theatre and cinema seats used to be organised by class. Boxes for exclusivity and to be seen (upper class); the upper circle, where you had to wear evening dress; the stalls for the less well-off (but evening dress was still expected); the gallery for the plebs where you could wear what you liked. They had different entrances so the classes didn’t have to mingle. In early theatres there were no stalls with fixed seats: the ground floor was the “pit”, where commoners sat on benches and ate (gasp!) oranges, probably throwing the peel on the floor. The bar was also on this floor and you might expect to bump into some shady ladies.

A friend tells me that on cruise ships, restaurants on different decks act as a filter: some won't serve fried food for breakfast, or chips for lunch. These delicacies can all be found on the top deck.

And why do we have two “classes” of train travel?

A social mobility tsar was appointed in June 2013. Will he address the problem of people wishing to climb down the ladder? The working classes always seem to be having more fun, and the Teales have life sewn up. How do you become lower middle class? Save money and move to a suburb. Enjoy your garden and good local (free) schools. Make friends at the many organisations that exist for improving the area. Join whichever church has the most members. Sing in the choir. Raise money with crafternoons and cupcake decorating sessions. Research careers with your children and send them to catering college or hair and beauty school. Dress conservatively – copy your neighbours.

But if you want to pose as a member of another class, do your homework: on consumer TV programme Watchdog a researcher posed as a “post-modern artist” who’d created an installation out of fly-tipped rubbish. She talked very “posh” – almost an “OK, yah”, something no posh person has ever said and is a cliché from the 80s. She wore a back-combed pompadour held back by an elastic band, with a flowery silk bandeau, teamed with a long, flowery skirt. What was she aiming for? Did she think "artists = pretentious = posh"? Did someone tell her that posh girls wear headscarves and hairbands? (Again, 30 years out of date.) Why didn’t she go to Shoreditch and find out what artists really look like (and sound like)?

How to blend in

The upper-class Stow-Crats go in for bonkers cheese-paring methods – writer India Knight recommends making your own butter, David Cameron says he never buys budget bread, he has a breadmaking machine. In the 20s, they employed French chefs but made their guests hand over twopence if they used the phone.

The middle-middle Weybridges are looking for love online, claiming they are interested in evenings at the theatre or concerts, or long walks in the country. That should filter out common timewasters.

What to say about wind farms: Socialist – not in my backyard! And they’re part of this global warming conspiracy which is just common people telling us what to do.

What to say about fracking: It’s destructive, ugly, aggressive, bullying – what’s not to like? And it will only inconvenience people living in “desolate” parts of the northeast.

What to say about the badger cull: We’re all for it because the lefties are against it, and besides cruelty is somehow good for us.

The upper middle-class Upwards don’t believe in magic any more, but they are into mysticism: the kind that involves a lot of hard work and self-denial and harsh meditation weeks in India. They don’t like a philosophy to be too “utilitarian” – they prefer them to be completely useless.

The more downmarket Teales and Definitelies prefer magic, which is fun as long as you don’t end up handing over hundreds of pounds to Madame Sosostris.

Upwards and Weybridges get terribly wound up over how to ask for things in shops. “Can I get a latte” is a ghastly Americanism and everybody who uses it should be shot, or perhaps just horse-whipped. Can we say “I’ll take a…” No, no, no! And as for “Give us a…” or “Give us one of those”! You expect it to be followed by “dude”! Small children are tortured over “Can I get down?” or “Can I have a biscuit?” “You can – and you MAY,” answer their parents. So, how do we ask for things in shops, cafés and restaurants? I’ll take vanilla. I mean “May I have a…” (How do they feel about “Could I have a…” or “Just a latte, please”? Or “mine’s a pint”?)

Upwards think that they run the world and nobody tells them what to do, but look down on public service roles that are filled by Weybridges and Teales – parish councillors, aldermen, mayors, social workers, probation officers, the staff of town halls. These people are “petty bureaucrats”. A friend writes: “They’re always terribly snobbish about the councillor class, civic pride generally, because they've attained a distinction which has nothing to do with birth or breeding (or culture).”

Sometimes they go so far as to claim they want to abolish government, repeal all laws and get rid of science, because there are too many laws, politicians are all lying twisters, and Brian Cox smiles too much (telling us what to do, and knowing more than us). 


Moving with the times

Upwards frequently “muddle their values” (Margery Allingham). They don’t seem to know what’s really important.

In the kind of shabby-genteel family that I am talking about there is far more consciousness of poverty than in any working-class family above the level of the dole. Rent and clothes and school-bills are an unending nightmare, and every luxury, even a glass of beer, is an unwarrantable extravagance. Practically the whole family income goes in keeping up appearances. (George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier)

We were prepared to have a nurse and a servant as a necessary extravagance, but would never have dreamed of having a car. If we went to theatres it would be to the pit. I would have perhaps one evening dress, and that would be a black one so as not to show the dirt… We would never take a taxi anywhere… It made for less luxury, plainer food, clothes and all those things. (Agatha Christie, An Autobiography)

My parents tried gracious living on a too-small budget. They couldn’t afford to heat the house, which was too big anyway, so it was always freezing in the winter. Why didn’t we heat one room (apart from the kitchen), put the telly in it, and all live there? People were always being hived off into separate rooms. We ate off Georgian silver but our parents were stingy about butter, sugar and jam. Why didn’t they sack the nanny, sell the silver and buy lots of butter? Of course they had to pretend that it was common to eat lots of butter or put sugar in your tea or be warm enough! Every meal had to be formal, and they were one long opportunity for issuing orders and bullying. Silver items were brought out, not used, and put away again, twice a day. (And then my parents retired to a bungalow and put all the silver in a safe – and there it stayed.)

More here.